Subsidised flight tickets for all Easing the burden of all
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This is perhaps the first time that a State Government has reached out and appealed to the Centre to keep a check on the soaring flight ticket prices and while no one knows whether the Union Civil Aviation Ministry would take heed of the appeal and prevail upon the different private airlines operating on the Imphal sector to keep a check on the ticket fare, it is a profound statement on how hopelessly cut off Imphal is with the rest of the country. And if Imphal has to bear the cost of taking the air route everytime the people need to step outside Manipur, the Kuki-Zo folks have to either travel all the way to Aizawl by road or proceed to either Dimapur or Guwahati to catch a flight to Delhi or Kolkata, to name just two cities. This has been the reality since the evening of May 3, 2023 and the absurdity of it all can be seen in the absence of any worthwhile efforts being taken up to break the ice and put things on track, the track to normalcy. From the moment Manipur went up in flames in the evening of May 3, 2023 thousands of additional troops have been rushed in here but it is more than obvious that the pumping in of thousands of security personnel has not been able to make any difference at the ground level. No Meitei would dare take the Imphal-Dimapur stretch by road and no Kuki-Zo folk would dare to step inside Imphal or any of the valley districts. In fact the buffer zones drawn up under the line, ‘You be in charge of the valley, I will look after the hills’ is complete in the sense that today Manipur is divided into the areas settled by the Meiteis and the areas settled by the Kuki-Zo people. And it has been like this for over 20 months now. It is in the face of such a reality that the Government approached the Union Civil Aviation Minister to monitor the price of flight tickets and while this is a sign of taking the reality into consideration, it pains to see that a situation like this has been allowed to develop to such a stage. As noted, the move made by the State Government is acknowledged and is something which could have been taken up earlier, but it is positive to see Imphal acknowledging the sufferings of the people, particularly those who belong to the lower middle class families and have to move outside Manipur for some work or the other. Moreover thousands of young students study outside Manipur and the huge burden on the parents and elders of the family just to arrange the flight fares of their young children is something which need not be spelt out.
Given this background and the immense pressure on the people, the launch of addition flights by Alliance Air with highly subsidised flight tickets went on to occupy prime space in all the Imphal based dailies. The ticket pricing, under Viability Gap Funding, sounds extremely attractive coming as it does with the rate pegged between Rs 2000 and Rs 5000 on the Imphal-Guwahati-Imphal, Imphal-Kolkata-Imphal, Imphal- Dimapur-Imphal routes. Not clear if the said fare structure would be applicable on the Imphal-Delhi route, but it is good to see the State Government tying up with an airline to ease the burden of the people. The efforts taken up should be noted and perhaps this is the first time that Imphal has done something which would directly ease the burden of the people. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that the tie up with Alliance Air cannot be for posterity and the Government cannot overlook the urgency of working out something which would be acceptable to people on either side of the clash divide. This is precisely the reason why the coming of the new Governor has elicited so much interests. The new man at the Raj Bhavan has already visited Churachandpur and Moreh and next in line could be Kangpokpi. Early days yet, but the Governor has already made it clear that the ‘Solution first, peace later’ slogan is not within reach for peace should precede everything else. One also wonders whether there would be any follow up on the October 15 Delhi meeting of 2024.
Given this background and the immense pressure on the people, the launch of addition flights by Alliance Air with highly subsidised flight tickets went on to occupy prime space in all the Imphal based dailies. The ticket pricing, under Viability Gap Funding, sounds extremely attractive coming as it does with the rate pegged between Rs 2000 and Rs 5000 on the Imphal-Guwahati-Imphal, Imphal-Kolkata-Imphal, Imphal- Dimapur-Imphal routes. Not clear if the said fare structure would be applicable on the Imphal-Delhi route, but it is good to see the State Government tying up with an airline to ease the burden of the people. The efforts taken up should be noted and perhaps this is the first time that Imphal has done something which would directly ease the burden of the people. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that the tie up with Alliance Air cannot be for posterity and the Government cannot overlook the urgency of working out something which would be acceptable to people on either side of the clash divide. This is precisely the reason why the coming of the new Governor has elicited so much interests. The new man at the Raj Bhavan has already visited Churachandpur and Moreh and next in line could be Kangpokpi. Early days yet, but the Governor has already made it clear that the ‘Solution first, peace later’ slogan is not within reach for peace should precede everything else. One also wonders whether there would be any follow up on the October 15 Delhi meeting of 2024.